ubuntu-planet

I started this blog three and a half years ago with the headline "Amplify the Signal". In general, that sentence has served me well. But recently, I've been thinking if there's a clearer statement I can make to state my intent.

Then on Friday, a close Ubuntu friend asked me, "Why are you so passionate about Ubuntu?"

In a nearly automatic way, it all "clicked" at that moment. I blurted out "I believe the most important battle to fight is the one against ignorance, and Ubuntu is the best way to do it." Let me explain...

People mostly have their attention siphoned to the crappiest and most caustic drivel the web has to offer. I don't need to name sites and content. You know the places. Littered with ads, useless trivia, minutia, stuff that is so far from mattering that it's brutally painful. Meanwhile the world rots.

To quote Lessig, "We need to get to the root of the problem." (He thinks it's political funding, but he's wrong.) The real root of the problem is the world's diet of "junk information". Like junk food, "junk information" is toxic, it causes mental diabetes, and it's everywhere. It is foisted upon people as soon as they fire up their browsers. It's a predetermined path. The second people power on their devices their proprietary systems take them to the "properties" they are supposed to see. You know, the ones that fund the mansions of the predatory 1%. The sociopaths.

So, today, I'm declaring the "War on Ignorance", and I'm adding that tagline to my blog. It is unacceptable to prey on other people through the use of technology that breeds ignorance, and the war is hereby declared.

Enter our weapon: Ubuntu. It's ours. It's free. It's a clear channel that obeys our wishes, and more importantly our Mom's wishes, and takes us to places on the web where *we* want to go. Places that can teach us what's really going on and how to make the world a better place. Places that respect us.

There's only one catch. (Relatively) no one knows about Ubuntu. And this my friends is the first thing we must fix. We can't win the war until Ubuntu is front and foremost in the minds of everyone we know. Ubuntu not only needs to be top of mind, but it needs to be the spotlight that makes it obvious that every proprietary system is predatory and socially unacceptable. In fact let's not even use the term proprietary any more. Let's just call these systems what they are: *predatory*.

Will you help me win the war? Will you help me end the ignorance of Ubuntu and thereby end ignorance. Let's make this our top priority. Let's attack the root of the problem.

In 1975, NASA launched the historic billion–dollar mission to land on Mars and to photograph its surface. It was the most ambitious space science project in history and it was a resounding success. Well, almost...

All but a few images were lost. Why? Depending on who you ask, you'll get a bunch of excuses, apologies, or even silence. My best information (from the source) tells me it was a result of data loss, indirectly related to the misapplication of proprietary software and tools to a public mission. Proprietary software has no place in projects that are funded by the public for the public. Lesson learned? Hopefully.

A few years back, when I was just getting started building Ubuntu Vancouver, I met Kip Warner who introduced me to one of the most profound and interesting projects I had ever heard of: a project to create a game on Ubuntu that would allow people to design a new society based on Mars as a way to learn why Earth is broken and how to build a future society that actually works.